


A Day Without a Night

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Pacify [13]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Biting, Choking, Dream Sex, F/M, Fingerfucking, Knifeplay, Mildly Dubious Consent, Rough Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 03:14:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3472349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Daryl's arms, Beth dreams. Of the woods. Of running. Of being hunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day Without a Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is what you get when you have an episode full of Daryl pacing around like a fucking wolf. 
> 
> Song for this is [Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy".](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmrfgj0MZI)
> 
> I probably don't even need to do this but I feel like I should be clear: While I've been trying to keep things in this series safe and healthy and reasonable - while still taking certain liberties here and there - _this is not that._ This pretty much had to be a dream sequence and not just because of the walker issue. This is not safe. This is not healthy. Don't hunt people like animals. Don't aim crossbows at your loved ones. I know it might seem like a good idea, but I urge you to refrain from doing so. Thank you.

_She turns. Stirs in the dark. Lying close to him, lying wrapped up in him, hurting in a low, warm, pleasant buzz. Still half flying from what he did to her, what he made her do - on her knees looking up at him, his hands in her hair, little bit of fire as she pulled away, flashed him a grin, and oh, he made her pay for that. Stuffed her panties into her mouth to muffle her screams and and made her pay, made her skin burn, made her come - and then, just for fun, made her pay again._

_Flying in his arms, drifting slowly back down. Everything she wanted. Everything she pushed for, reached for. He helped her get there. Carried her back._

_Now, floating further into the dark, into a thick tangle of tree trunks behind her eyes. Spreading branches, light fingering its delicate way through. She knows this place. Or she knows a place like it. They were out there for so long, she lost track of the days even if - at first - she tried to keep track. Tried to write them down like wishes, each second and minute and hour a hope for another one. Keep the time to make more time come true._

_But all the clocks ran down and all the watches stopped._

_Until, together, they wound them up again and set them to run._

_So here she is in the trees, in the heat, in the dapples of light, and she runs._

~

She isn't going to bother to question how she got here, or why she's not afraid of walkers - why she's not listening or looking for them, or why she already knows there aren't any so she doesn't have to be afraid. She's not going to question why she's running, pounding through the woods as low branches and shrubs and saplings whip at her arms and back and legs, her belly and her breasts. She's not going to question why it hurts especially much when this happens, because she's naked, even her feet bare, though running like this at least doesn't hurt her there, as if the bottoms of her feet are too tough to be hurt. Like they're pads. Or hooves.

Like she's an animal.

And she's not going to question why she _is_ afraid, of something else.

And she's not going to question why every hot rushing part of that fear is absolutely delightful. Thrumming through her blood, beating her heart like a drum. Swirling through her into a fever of arousal, a sweet ache between her thighs which burns higher every time their insides rub together.

Like running is the touch of her fingers there, stroking herself.

Like it's his.

He's behind her. She knows it suddenly, with another burst of that wonderful fear. He's behind her and maybe he's not faster than her, because she's always been swift - _swift as a deer_ \- but he's relentless, he's hungry, and he knows how to catch her.

_You're a tracker. So track._

There's nowhere she can go where he won't find her in the end. And sooner or later she's going to get tired.

And maybe she wants to be caught.

But for now she runs and she slides through the muggy summer air like cutting through thin water, only so much more effortless. It slicks her skin. Her hair is in tangles. She makes her way up a slope and down the other side, skidding a little in the leaves, cuts hard to the left and along the edge and toward a stream bottom, her arms pumping and the breath burning in her lungs. Again, it should hurt, but it doesn't - or at least it doesn't hurt in any way she doesn't want, any way she doesn't like.

Which is familiar.

And the thing is that she feels so _alive_ , running like this. She feels her body, what it can do, how it can carry her, what it can take, and she feels strong. It doesn't matter that she can't outrun him, that he's going to take her down; she's going to make him _work_ for it, going to make him _earn_ it, and if he's going to have her she's going to make damn sure he's _worthy_ of it.

So she turns and looks up the hill, half tumbling to a brief halt and panting, and she sees him at the top, staring down at her. Bow lowered and eyes dark, half hidden by the fall of his hair. _Hungry_ , she thinks again, because he's a man, of course he is, but like this...

Like this, he's also not quite a man. Like her. Like she's almost sure that if she looked down - though she knows it actually isn't so - she might see not bare human feet, not toes, but hooves.

Like he might pull his lips and reveal long, sharp incisors. Teeth made to rip and tear.

She's heaving air into her lungs, and he's just looking at her. He could come for her, but he isn't.

He's playing with her.

She grins, sudden and hard, and takes off again.

She isn't even running to outrun him anymore. She's running because there's joy in it, running because it's a game, all right, and she's going to play to win even if technically she loses - and she doesn't even think there's any losing here.

She thinks, when he catches her, it's going to be pretty much a win for both of them.

She has no idea how much longer it goes on. Everything blurs into sticky heat and light and green, into speed and the rhythm of the air and her feet, the rhythm taking her body, and the ache between her legs. She could stop and take care of it herself, or just lie down on the ground and spread her legs wide and let her fingers give her what she wants, get herself so ready for him that she'll come the second he touches her - come without asking permission, and wouldn't that be a nice little middle finger right in his face - but she doesn't, she won't, because that's not part of the game.

That's _cheating_. She doesn't cheat. She never has.

Along the stream bottom and up another slope, along a flat stretch of ground. Ahead she can see a break in the trees, light and waving grass - and she knows this place, she does - and it would be better to stay in here where there's more cover but she can feel him closing in behind her, somehow keeping pace with her after all, and if she turned aside now he'd take her easily.

Only one thing to do.

She bursts out into the meadow, the grass tall and thick, the scatters of wildflowers all yellow and white. The grass is even crueler than the branches were when it whips at her naked skin, but she leaps through it, wild and graceful, and dives into a patch of it that looks thickest. Thick enough, maybe.

Maybe.

She desperately tries to ease her breathing, hand over her mouth. As it is she's gasping. He'll hear. He'll definitely hear.

He's close.

She hears him coming through the grass. Slow now, unhurried, purposeful. Sees him now, his legs; she can't see the bow but she knows he has it half raised, ready to bring up and aim, and terror shivers delightfully through her, raising goosebumps on her skin. She used to play like this, she remembers suddenly. When she was little. She'd go into the woods and imagine she was being chased, imagine there were monsters and she had to run, and the very act of running would churn up its own fear, make her heart race and her breath quicken. And there had been something fun about that, even if she was afraid. It wasn't real fear.

It, like this, had been a game.

She shifts just a little. Just a little. Ducks her head and sees the rest of him, turning slowly in place, only a couple of yards away from her. His head is lifted and there's something odd about it and about how he's holding it, until she realizes what he's doing.

He's scenting the air.

And makes a final turn and looks straight at her and she knows it's over.

_Oh, well._

She's not going to wait for him to come. She explodes from cover and tears past him, panic tight in her throat- And stops dead, because she doesn't have to turn to know what he's doing, what she'll see.

She does anyway. She turns and a heavy moan pushes out of her throat between her sharp, panting breaths.

Bow up. Aimed. Pointed directly at her.

There is no mercy whatsoever in his eyes.

She drops to her knees, her head back, and looks up at him. He steps forward, closer to her, and the bow never wavers.

_Please_ , she thinks, and has no idea what she would be pleading for if she could even say it.

He does lower the bow when he reaches her. Drops it to his side, holds it one-handed, and his other tangles in her hair and he jerks her head back. His gaze, when he moves it over her, is appraising. But not cool. Not detached. Like everything else, there's heat in it. Predators might be cold, but that's not all he is.

Under all of this, she knows - under and behind this game - that's not what he is at all. Because under the heat is warmth.

She licks her lips and he releases her, drops into a crouch, sets down the bow and reaches for her. She whimpers when he combs his hands into her hair again, but this time when he pulls her head back it's softer. More careful. He pulls her in and she can smell him, smell him sharper and keener than she ever has before - and what she smells isn't anything human. She doesn't even know how she would describe it, except it's like when she looked at him standing at the top of the hill, and was sure of the sharpness of his teeth.

_Animals_ , she thinks again, her lips parting. And, a little hysterical, _mating_. He can smell the same on her. It's how he found her. She shivers violently and he grins at her, and though it's gone in a second, for the span of that second she does see his teeth, long and gleaming and very sharp.

And he kisses her, and she feels them.

She melts into it, reaching up and closing a hand over his wrist. He caught her. He won.

So did she.

She feels everything. The breeze, even through the sticky heat, at least attempting to dry the sweat on her skin. The distant, gentle scratching of the flattened grass under her knees and shins. His hands on her, his entire body feeling like it's pushing her down even though his hands are the only thing touching her - his hands and his mouth, pushing her lips apart, teeth against them. Teeth closing on her, scraping her chin, suddenly harder as he nips her jaw. She hisses in breath, stiffens, almost tries to pull away.

Almost.

It couldn't ever go any other way, because there are places his hands find by now, places they love to go and where they usually go first. She's anticipating his hand on her throat, and when she feels it she whimpers again as she realizes how much she _wanted_ it there, how right it feels. He's pulled back now, just his hands left, and when she opens her eyes he's looking at her again. That same kind of appraisal.

Like he's trying to decide what he wants to do with her.

He's holding her loosely enough to allow her to breathe. Just enough. But she licks her lips once more and mouths _please_ \- except that's ridiculous, she thinks vaguely, animals don't talk - and his hand tightens and squeezes her throat closed, and heat spikes down into her cunt and her mouth drops open in a silent moan.

Just for a moment. When his grip loosens she expects to feel the need to cough, but she doesn't... And of course she doesn't.

She's not going to ask any questions here.

His other hand is moving, sliding slowly down her body, cupping her breast, swiping across her nipple with his thumb until it hardens. He's exploring her - and he's done that before, hasn't he? - but this is different. Nothing hesitant, nothing shy, and if he's careful it's a kind of care she can feel has something fast and hard and more than a little vicious behind it. He's keeping it in check. Keeping it sheathed like a knife.

Like claws.

Her breath shudders, tenses, and she wants to arch against that touch, get more of it, but the second she tries the hand on her throat tightens up again. Warning. So she sighs, shivers, does what he wants, but when his fingers trail down her lower belly the sound she lets out is more like a needy whine.

She can't look down, because he's holding her head in place, holding it up so all she can see is his face. But she wants to. She wants to watch him, see what he's doing. How he's teasing her, keeping that vicious hunger back enough for him to be able to do so, moving to the creases of her inner thighs without once touching her cunt. She wants to watch it, because she knows it'll make it so much better and so much worse.

But all she can do is look at him, and see - again - that weird optical illusion where he seems like he's two things at once. The man, the man she _knows_ , loves, fought her way back for, trusts with everything in her. And something else.

Something with teeth.

_Please_ , she mouths again, and that's when he grips her by the shoulder and drags her around, other hand still on her neck, turning her roughly to face away from him and pulling her back flush with his chest, her ass against him, the hard line of his cock pressing against her. She's thrown off-balance, half sprawled, but he hooks an arm around her middle and yanks her back up onto her knees, slapping her thighs apart. She's trembling, heat and fear churning through her, close to laughter-

And that's when she feels the knife.

She freezes. It's instinct by now. Not just because of the fear but because she's not an idiot, and struggling when he's pressing the edge of a knife against her ribs is a very, very stupid idea. She keeps herself still, her breaths tight and shallow, and when he uses the hand on her throat to tug her more gently against him she goes without hesitation, letting him tip her head back against his shoulder.

He's so warm. He's so strong. His mouth brushes her ear and she stares upward and catches her lower lip between her teeth as the edge of the blade scrapes up between her breasts.

The sky is so blue. It's a heavy blue. It's a blue that looks like it's about to fall on her.

His hand slips away from her throat and the knife replaces it.

_Hold still,_ he's saying without saying anything. _Be good for me._ She swallows, feels her neck pushed against the edge of the blade, and it doesn't matter that he's not choking her anymore; she still can't breathe. It's only when she feels herself groping at his thigh that she remembers she even has hands.

Then his hand thrusts between her legs and she forgets everything.

It's not gentle. It's an assault. Two fingers shoved into her and barely any time to adjust to them before there's three, stretching her hard, hard enough to hurt. She cries out, tense and pained, but he doesn't let up, fucking them in and out of her, fast and utterly relentless, the knuckle of his thumb nudging against her clit. She shakes, teeth bared and sharp little whines bleeding out through them - _bleeding_ , she thinks with another pulse of terror, _oh god_ \- and she can't help it; she rocks back against him and he pushes forward to meet her, breathing hard. Panting close to her ear, almost growling, and the pain is dissolving into heavy waves of deep pleasure beating against the inside of her skin.

The edge of the knife. She feels it under her jaw and tilts her head back as far as it'll go, her mouth fallen open, those little whines twisting into thick sobs.

He's dragging her upward. She needs to ask his permission to fall, needs to beg him... But she can't. She doesn't have the words.

Animals don't have words.

So she doesn't ask. She just does. Her whole body surges up against his hand, the knife totally forgotten, her hips snapping forward, and the sound that tears out of her when she comes is something between a scream and a howl.

Eyes wide. That heavy blue. Opening for her.

She comes back to him shoving her away, sending her tumbling to the ground and barely able to catch herself on those hands she forgot existed. She half turns over, shaky and weak, her legs tingling and half numb, and he's stripping off his vest and shirt, tossing them both aside, following with his boots and belt and pants until he's as naked as she is. Crouching there, staring at her as she instinctively tries to pull herself up and away from him, he looks just as much like an animal as she's been feeling.

More.

Even if she could run now...

She turns over onto her hands and knees, starts to scramble - one last desperate attempt at escape - and he grips her by the hips and drags her backward, hauls her ass into the air, buries himself in her with a single hard thrust. She gasps, cries out, and it hurts and it feels _so_ fucking good, and knowing she can't possibly get away from him only makes struggling against him that much better. She wriggles in his grip, her moans rough and grating and sharp at the end, and he tangles a hand in her hair and jerks her head up as he fucks her - and she wouldn't have believed he could do it any harder but somehow he is.

_Please_.

No pleading here. He hunted her and he tracked her and he caught her. Fair and square.

Her arms almost crumple under her and then they do and she goes down on her face, her head turned to the side and dry grass stalks digging into her cheek. But again he's pulling her up, by the hair and then by the shoulder, curling an arm around her middle and pulling her back against him. She has hands, she does, she can use them, and she hooks her arm around the back of his neck and holds on, her other hand plunging between her legs. She's so close already, fucked into it, and when she comes again so sudden and so sharp like his hand yanking at her hair, he fucks her _through_ it, growling, breath hot on the back of her neck.

She would fall if he wasn't holding her up. But he does, and again his hand finds her throat, squeezes, squeezes until she can't breathe at all, her hands loose and useless at her sides and not even able to struggle anymore, and he tenses, everything tightening.

The snarl that rips out of him isn't even vaguely human. And she's just finding the strength to grope at his hand, her eyes wide, when he sinks his teeth into the side of her neck.

She would scream if he let her.

For a moment - or maybe it's an hour, or maybe a day, she has no idea - everything freezes. He holds her. She can't even feel pain. It's something beyond pain.

Somehow it's everything.

He releases her. Lowers her down. She thinks. She goes limp. Her cunt is burning, her neck is burning, everything hurts. Everything is amazing. The ground is like a gentle hand opening up under her, cradling her. And he's over her, warm and solid, leaning down and nuzzling at her. Her shoulder, the nape of her neck. Nosing at where he bit her. She feels the broad swipe of his tongue.

_I love you,_ she thinks, almost smiling, but she doesn't say it, because she doesn't have to.

He crouches over her - guarding her, maybe - until she finally manages to turn and look up at him. She reaches up and combs his hair back from his face.

He's human. He might be the most fundamentally _human_ man she's ever met.

He lowers himself the rest of the way down, presses against her side and curls an arm around her. Again she feels his lips on her neck, his tongue - soft, soothing - and she can guess why. She looks up at that heavy blue sky, breathing deep and steady, and she watches the birds circle overhead.

She rises to meet them and the dark takes her again.

~

_Turning over, curling closer to him. He murmurs something, pushes a leg between hers. For a moment her eyes open and she sees light from outside, light through the blinds, and the outlines of his face and shoulder and arm. She reaches up, touches his cheek, his mouth, smiles._

_This is everything._

_She sinks back down and drifts until morning._


End file.
